The white cops looked at Grave Digger and Coffin Ed with the envious awe usually reserved for a lion tamer with a cage of big cats.
Coffin Ed joined Grave Digger and they walked to a call box and phoned Lieutenant Bailey.
'All over for today,' Grave Digger reported.
Bailey gave a sigh of relief. 'Thank God! I don't want any riots up here on my tour.'
'All you got to worry about now are some killings and robberies,' Grave Digger said. 'Nothing to worry the comissioner.'
Bailey hung up without commenting. He knew of their feud with the commissioner. Both of them had been suspended at different times for what the commissioner considered unnecessary violence and brutality. He knew also that colored cops had to be tough in Harlem to get the respect of colored hoodlums. Secretly he agreed with them. But he wasn't taking any sides.
'Well, now we're back to cotton,' Coffin Ed said as they walked back towards their car.
'Maybe you are; I ain't,' Grave Digger said. 'All I want to do is go out and break some laws. Other people have all the fun.'
'Damn right. Let's put five bucks on a horse.'
'Hell, man, you call that breaking the law? Let's take the ladies to some unlicensed joint run by some wanted criminal and drink some stolen whisky.'
Coffin Ed chuckled. 'You're on,' he said.
17
The telephone rang at 10.25 a.m. Grave Digger hid his head beneath the pillow. Stella answered it sleepily. A brisk, wide-awake and urgent voice said, 'This is Captain Brice. Let me speak to Jones, please.'
She pulled the pillow from over his head. 'The captain,' she said.
He groped for the receiver, experimentally opening his eyes. 'Jones,' he mumbled.
He listened to the rapid staccato voice for three minutes. 'Right,' he said, tense and wide-awake, and was getting out of the bed before he hung up the receiver.
'What is it?' she asked in a tiny voice, frightened and alarmed as she always was when these morning summonses came.
'Deke's escaped. Two officers killed.' He had put on his shorts and undershirt and was pulling up his pants.
She was out of the bed and moving towards the kitchen. 'You want coffee?'
'No time,' he said, putting on a clean shirt.
'Nescafe,' she said, disappearing into the kitchen.
With his shirt on he sat on the side of the bed and put on clean socks and his shoes. Then he went into the bathroom and washed his face and brushed his short kinky hair. Without a shave his dark lumpy face looked dangerous. He knew how he looked but it couldn't be helped. He didn't have time for a shave. He put on a black tie, went into the bedroom and took his holstered pistol from a hook in the closet. He laid the pistol on the dresser while he strapped on his shoulder sling and then picked it up and spun the cylinder. It always carried five shells, the hammer resting on a empty chamber. The shades were still drawn, and the long nickel-plated revolver glinting in the subdued light from three table lamps looked as dangerous as himself. He slipped it into the greased holster and began stuffing his pockets with the other tools of his trade: a leather-covered buckshot sap with a whalebone handle, a pair of handcuffs, report book, flashlight, stylo, and the leather-bound metal snap case made to hold fifteen extra shells he always carried in his leather-lined side coat-pocket. They also kept an extra box or two of shells in the glove compartment of their official car.
He was standing at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, when Coffin Ed blew for him. Stella tensed. Her smooth brown face grew strained.
'Be careful,' she said.
He stepped around the table and kissed her. 'Ain't I always?' he said.
'Not always,' she murmured.
But he was gone, a big, rough, dangerous man in need of a shave, clad in a rumpled black suit and an old black hat, the bulge of a big pistol clearly visible on the heart side of his broad-shouldered frame.
Coffin Ed looked the same; they could have been cast from the same mold with the exception of Coffin Ed's acid-burned face that was jerking with the tic that came whenever he was tense.
Yesterday, Sunday afternoon, it had taken forty-five minutes to get to Harlem. Today, Monday morning, it took twenty-two.
Coffin Ed said only, 'The fat is in the fire.'
'It's going to burn,' Grave Digger said.
Two white officers had been killed and the precinct station looked like headquarters for the invasion of Harlem. Official cars lined the street. The commissioner's car was there, and cars of the chief inspector, the chief of Homicide, the medical examiner and a D.A.'s assistant. Police cruisers from downtown, from Homicide, from all the Harlem precincts, were scattered about. The street was closed to civilian traffic. There was no place inside for all the army of cops and the overflow stood outside, on the sidewalks, in the street, waiting for their orders.
Coffin Ed parked in the driveway of a private garage and they walked to the station house. The brass was assembled in the captain's office. The lieutenant on the desk said, 'Go on in, they want to see you.'
Heads turned when they entered the office. They were stared at as though they were criminals themselves.
'We want Deke O'Hara and his two gunmen, and we want them alive,' the commissioner said coldly without greeting. 'It's your bailiwick and I'm giving you a free hand.'
They stared back at the commissioner but neither of them spoke.
'Let me give them the picture, sir,' Captain Brice said.
The commissioner nodded. The captain led them into the detectives' room. A white detective got up from his desk in the corner and gave the captain a seat. Other detectives nodded to Grave Digger and Coffin Ed as they passed. No one spoke. They nodded back. They kept the record straight. There was no friendship lost between them and the other precinct detectives; but there was no open animosity. Some resented their position as the aces of the precinct and their close associations with the officers in charge; others were envious; the young colored detectives stood in awe of them. But all took care not to show anything.
Captain Brice sat behind the desk and Grave Digger perched a ham on the edge as usual. Coffin Ed drew up a straight-backed chair and sat opposite the captain.
'Deke was being taken to the magistrate's court,' the captain said. 'There were thirteen others going. The wagon was drawn up in the back court and we were bringing the prisoners from their cells, handcuffed together two by two as customary. Two officers were standing by, supervising the loading — the driver and his helper — and two jailers were bringing the prisoners from the bullpen through the back door and herding them downstairs to the yard and into the wagon. Deke's Back-to-Africa group had collected in the street out front, a thousand or more. They were chanting, 'We want O'Malley… We want O'Malley,' and trying to break through the front door. They were getting unruly and I sent the extra officers out into the street to herd them to one side and keep order. Then they began getting noisy and started rioting. Some began throwing stones through the front windows and others began battering the gate to the driveway with garbage cans. I sent two men from out back to clear the driveway to the street. When they opened the gates to go out they were mobbed and disarmed and the mob streamed into the driveway. Deke had just come from the back door on his way down the stairs, handcuffed to a suspected murderer, one Mack Brothers, when the mob came in sight and saw him. Six prisoners had already been loaded. Then, from what I've been told by a trusty looking out a jail window — all the officers were out front trying to contain the riot- the jailers slammed and locked the door, leaving the two officers alone with the wagon. And at that moment the two gunmen came up from both sides of the high back wall and shot the two officers dead. The gunmen were dressed in officers' uniforms so at first they didn't attract much attention. Then they jumped down inside, put Deke in the wagon and closed the door and got into the front seat — and took the wagon out of the yard.' He stopped and looked at them to see what they would say but they said nothing. So he went on. 'Some of the mob had
